


Dreaming Dead

by HappyLeech



Category: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Genre: Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Ghosts, Memory, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 12:02:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7438047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyLeech/pseuds/HappyLeech
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pious is dead (finally), the Ancients are mostly sealed away (thank god) and Alex can't sleep</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreaming Dead

Alex wakes with a gasp, memories of Ellia echoing in her sleep addled brain. 

She’d wanted adventure! To be more than a slave, more than just a pretty thing to dance and sing and keep beds warm at night. And she’d found it in a cursed book, a sacred temple, and Mantorok. 

Ellia has no hatred for the Corpse God who kept her soul suspended for eight hundred years, but Alex rages for her, waking with tears in her eyes for every moment Ellia spent in between death and dying.

Memories of days and nights passed, her corpse forgotten and never found, her only company the God’s heart, whispering dark secrets to her.

Alex hears them, and is violently ill, the repetition of night—day—night keeping her from a steady sleep.

But at the same time, Ellia sings to her, songs that Alex knows no longer exist, songs that died with the young dancer, and Alex wakes with tears of another kind in her eyes. The stories she hears and the tales Ellia knew are enchanting, and Alex makes a habit of writing them down.

For herself, and no one else.

 

Alex wakes with a pained moan, memories of Anthony twisting in her gut.

Oh, how devoted he was, so sacrificial, and he knew he did his duty to a T. He gave everything to save Charlemagne, and even so he failed. 

Alex still sobs when she thinks of how he spasmed, each time Pious’s magic drained his life, knees giving out and hitting the paving stones hard in the Oubllie catacombs. Her sobs become wracking cries when his years upon years of torture filters into her dreams.

He lays on the ground, a corpse but not dead; not alive, and the Ancients corrupt his mind, drive him mad.

She wakes those nights with curses on her lips, Chattur’gha or Xel’lotath or Ulyaoth creeping into her mind, and heaves until she swears she can taste blood and steel.

But even thought Anthony comes to her in dreams of pain and sorrow and death, he also whispers to her stories of his life before; his younger sisters’ endless supplies of energy, his father’s antics with an axe, his mothers weaving skill.

Alex wakes with knowledge of his mothers baking, and spends the early morning making buns and breads, until she has exhausted her supplies and put the oven to vigorous use.

 

Alex wakes with a cry, arms reaching for a long dead lover of a long dead man.

Karim loved so fully and deeply, and Chandra’s betrayal hurt him so—Alex knows how his spirit spurned her, even as their souls intertwined, for a time—but still he can not hate her.

Her dreams of Karim are not as painful as the others, even though his soul was bound to keep an Ancient sealed, and Alex wakes untroubled but still saddened.

Karim’s fingers intertwine in Chandra’s hair, and Alex breaths in her perfume as they kiss. Chandra runs her fingers down Alex’s chest, and Karim laughs breathlessly. Karim pulls Alex close, and Chandra lays with them. They are loved and lovers and Alex is accepted and pulled into their bed without more than a laugh.

Soft love songs are sung, promises made and broken, and Alex always wakes wanting more from the pair.

 

Alex wakes, choking on the smell of an old hospital, a lunatic’s screaming echoing in her ears.

Her ancestor, a doctor, leaves her all the knowledge he had at the time. How to splint a leg or arm, to dig out a musket ball, how to cauterize a wound, how to tie a tourniquet properly.

He also leaves her the Bonethieves, the monsters who took his people, took police and judge and took him to the asylum. His family left him to rot, and when Alex wakes she’s not sure if she agrees that he should have been free, nor that he should have been jailed. But he rants and raves to her when she is asleep and cannot escape that it was needed, that they needed to die, that they were going to kill everyone.

After all, she also wakes with the ghosting of blood on her hands, arms, 4 servants dead by her hand and more planned before one—the cook—strikes back. 

And only one of the dead was a true monster, and Alex wakes with regret and panic and a deep unease.

How many more are there, watching her, waiting to drag her away?

 

Alex wakes from dreams of Edwin Lindsey, Peter Jacob, and Michael Edwards with only faint memories. They never died by the Tome, by Pious and the Ancients, and most mornings she wakes with only a brief flash of memory.

She learns more of them by reading—Lindsey and Jacob both published, and Alex digs up newspaper scraps on Edwards—but she never pushes for more.

She has enough ghosts to keep her attention without adding three more.

 

Alex wakes, choking, Paul Luther’s death making her head swim.

Wrong place, wrong time, and he knows he was just a casualty in the Ancients war for power. Alex knows that he was nothing more than a fly to Pious, but that he held the Tome means that he had power.

Her sleep is restless most nights, but on occasion he is there to sooth her sleep. He talks of the order, his fellow monks, and for a time Alex can pretend he did not die under the hand of an Ancient, was not forced to put Anthony out of his misery, did not cause the death of an innocent man.

But he did, and some nights the comfort is stripped away, until all Alex feels is nausea for the loss of life, the deaths of Anthony and the Custodian.

Alex isn’t religious, but those are the nights she prays with him.

 

Alex wakes with a fear of dirt, her room far too small when she dreams of Roberto.

Buried alive, crushed, she heaves and spits into the sink, waiting and dreading the night she’ll see mud and dirt spilling from her mouth.

But there are also nights when he sits down with her in memory, tells her of the artists he met, the works he created. Those are the nights she wakes with Italian phrases in her mouth, and she dutifully copies down names of paintings and statues, hoping to one day see them in person.

After all, her Italian is better than before, Roberto cursing and weeping and spinning her tales until her fear of sleep and dark wet ground fade.

 

Alex wakes silent, tears streaming down her face and a pain in her chest on nights when she dreams of Edward Roivas.

She remembers him as Grand-da, the man who took her to the park, who took her to school, who took her in after her parents died. The man who made burnt pancakes and bad jokes, who would sit in silence writing while Alex read or did her school work.

She remembers him alive, and when he comes to her in death, it’s almost more than she can take. Watching as he topples, his head rolling across the floor, the Horror picking it up and swallowing it with one bite—

Alex sobs and screams, writhes in bed and is sick once she is upright.

There’s the smell of blood, the tacky feeling of it on her clothing, and the knowledge that he’s not there anymore. He repelled the Ancients once before, but now he’s gone and dead and--

And that’s what’s hardest on her.


End file.
